"Legion" is Back, But Is It Just a Fluke?

So, Legion came back, and it was unsurprisingly great, but there was moments where my least favorite aspect of the show's first season reared it's head. That issue, at least for me, was the show's occasional tendency to be weird with no real explanation or payoff and hope that it was visually interesting enough for you not to wonder what the heck that previous stuff was about. It's fun to witness, but often lacks focus and distracts from the real story. My problem with it stems largely from the fear that the show may become more reliant on it's visuals and go the way of, say, Heroes, which climbed thoroughly up it's ass after the first season. 

One of the two biggest perpetrators of this in the first episode was Admiral Fukuyama, the shadowy head of Division 3, who wears a giant basket on his head and communicates through mustachioed women with Alexa voices.

I'm not joking.

It's certainly fascinating to look at and gives scenes with him a weird tension, but is it necessary? Could he have just been a dude in a suit? I'm not one to question Noah Hawley, but I'm also just spitballing here. 

The other major weird bit was the narrator played by Jon Hamm. I love Jon Hamm in everything, to the point that I'll ignore the fact that he might also be playing Mr. Sinister at some point in the future, making this yet another weird plothole within the increasingly tangled and confusing X-Men timeline. 

Crumple this entire timeline up and throw into the sun. 

Throughout the first episode, monologues by Hamm are sprinkled. These speeches cover philosophy and the origin of delusions in comparison to regular ideas, and while the segments they're placed over are very disturbing and fun to watch, they feel somewhat vague. Sure, the delusions speech directly plays into the battle with the Shadow King and sets up the excellent reveal at the end of the episode, but what was the greater point of Chinese thinker Zhuanghazi, beyond perhaps setting up the idea that David is still trapped in the orb or even still stuck at Clockwork Asylum? 

Legion's a good show, arguably the best one Marvel has ever produced, so these are more worries than they are actual criticisms. But, ultimately, these worries stem from fear that Legion is going to end up like True Detective, a show that started brilliantly and went off the rails in it's second season by deciding to go as pretentious as possible. As long as Hawley continues to plot smartly and the cast continues to be excellent, I suspect things will be fine. But hey, just remember that this could go down at any point.